Optimistic

Então... quer dizer que... Sam Nelson casou-se? Que legal! (Translation from Portuguese to English: So you mean to tell me that Sam Nelson got married? How cool!) I´m excited to hear that Sam Barlow is going off to serve already.
Well we´re going to baptize a young man named Fabiano. He really listens during the messages and understands them. We still have to teach him more but he accepted a date for next month. There´s also a young man named Cristian who already knows everything. We just have to sit down with him and mark a date. He stopped us on the street the other day to tell us he´d been thinking about it a lot.
I was reading John the other day and when I came across verse 18 in chapter 21 I got emotional. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not."  I always get that way reading that verse. I know it's not exactly about this but it´s true that the Lord changes us and we do things that we wouldn´t normally do if it weren´t for Him.  He stretches and shapes us.
We had an activity at the Church. My companion and I invited about half the city and there wasn´t a single non-member who went. It´s tough but we´re still chippin´ away at things. The work goes on.
One of the young men I taught in my first area named Julian was baptized about a week after I was transferred from there and is active. He found out where my old companion Elder Andrade would be at on Sunday and went to Sacrament meeting in another city to visit Elder Andrade.
We played ping pong with the branch President today for P-Day and  we had lunch with the Philipelli´s (married couple missionaries). They are great and have three potential families to baptize...the couples just don´t want to get married... That´s normal here. That´s okay though, the Philipellis have a history of successfully marrying people! Wish me luck this week.

I would love a new razor" =)
I´ll have to send Rick some Brazilian deodorant. It´s so awful.

Perservering

Well we had district conference here in Quarai on Sunday. The mission president spoke and presided and then on the next day we had a mission zone conference which was again with President of course. P-day was moved today.
Some of the youth that we´re working with really are pretty special and we´re going to mark their baptismal dates for two Saturdays from now. One of them just turned 18 and while his mom didn´t want him to get baptized before (she thought he was too immature to make the decision even though she baptized him as a baby in the catholic church), now it should all work out for him to get baptized this month.
It´s been pretty decent weather and some days have even been pretty hot. Winter seems to have ended already. I´ll be staying this other transfer in Quarai. I don´t think I´ll be staying here more than three transfers.
Last week there was an activity at the Church where we watched some movie called "facing the giants" it´s about football and it´s obviously by some other Christian Church. You guys should check it out because it´s funny.
There´s apparently a blind guy in Quarai who´s faking it. I said hello and asked what his name was and he told me he didn´t have a name and uncomfortably scampered off. He now crosses to the other side of the street from very far away when we´re around. He has no way of knowing it´s us.
Lot´s of people were already baptized in Quarai. It´s a small town and has a pretty weak number of people who are active. If you got all the in-actives together you´d have a few stakes. Lot´s of people just don´t tell you they were already baptized. Lot´s of the really strong members just don´t live here anymore. For instance there´s a couple from here that are serving as mission president in Porto Alegre now. The leadership here is in up to their eye balls in work and reactivation but they are all dedicated great people.
We´re trying to find a few families to baptize.

From week July 31 to August 6

Well this week we had six investigators in sacrament meeting! The week was a bit unproductive but today is the start of a new transfer and no one from the district was transferred. This is good because I like the members, my companion and the senior missionary couple. We had lunch with the senior missionaries today. The president from one of the branches that we´re working in also had lunch with us. he´s a cool guy. 
Well Beatriz´s son Williom came to Sacrament meeting. We´ll see how it goes down. Christian and Fabiano are two young men who - if everything goes right - should be baptized two weeks from now (after the district conference).
We play ping pong on P-days in the chapel now and a lot of boys come to the church to play soccer. It was great because this week we invited some of the guys for a short message in the chapel and we used a chalk board to teach.
Fabiano is one of the young men who´s taking the messages and goes to the Church. He really seems to understand and to grasp things. He´s following through with commitments.
I hope you´re all happy at home. I´m happy here and chipping away at things.
Is the ward growing over there? Good luck at girls camp Mom.
Love, Elder H.

Pictures of Beatriz's Baptism

Well, this week was interesting. There´s a boy named Christian who should be getting baptized within the next two weeks.  There was only a couple people who went to Sacrament meeting this week. We plan on a combined baptism with Christian and a few other youth on the same day. We just have teach a few more principals to make sure they are all prepared.
We really want to find a family. As soon as we baptized Beatriz we started inviting her son to things. He went to a Super-Saturday. I hope he starts going to the Church on Sunday. We hope to complete the small family!
I´m studying and understanding a lot of principals in the Book of Mormon and the Bible that I didn´t understand before. I´m humbling myself and want to become a better missionary. Hold tight because I´m going to send a few pictures your way.
Love you all.

Pictures of the Zone

 Beatriz and Elder Hanson

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